Abstract [en]

There is not much research on how a new accounting system begins in an organization. Scientific research concerning sustainability and corporate sustainability reports has contributed to a curiosity of studying the early stages of a new possible sustainability accounting system. This has contributed to an increased interest in studying networks and relationships between actors by putting ourselves in the middle of the actions in an organization to possibly take part of the early stages. The purpose of this study is to study how corporate sustainability reports are constructed, with construction we mean how a new sustainability accounting system may be developed.We have conducted qualitative interviews with employees who work with social and environmental issues in Borås municipality. The study applies a case study design and a snowball selection. In total, we have interviewed eight employees in the municipality, four of whom are officials and four are politicians. During the empirics and analysis, we have applied an inductive approach with an ethnographic perspective. We have created our own categories with inspiration from Actor-network theory as method theory. We have analyzed the empirics based on the method theory and structured the empirics in order to clarify our observations under the categories involved actors, actors interests, conflicts and obstacles as well as translation.We have observed that the municipality is in the process of possibly developing a new sustainability accounting system. The municipality need to focus more on integrating the three dimensions of sustainability with each other and also how the municipality is to calculate social and environmental effects expressed in economic terms. The study shows that the financial accounting has a significant role in the municipality and that change is not advocated. To break old work patterns and ways of thinking the municipality should pay attention to its situation and identify problems. The study points towards the reality where we focus on the situation of the municipality. Altogether, we conclude that the municipality should create a network. When a network is created actors integrates with each other as they become actors in a network and gain value through interaction, thus reducing the complexity of the organization. The creation of a network may possibly contribute to a reconstruction of the municipality's sustainability accounting system.This paper is written in Swedish.